Architecture and landscape are connected on many levels in India. The meanings imbued in the architectural forms create diverse conceptual landscapes overlain on the same geographical area. Architecture defines the landscape, and the presence of different architectural traditions helps create these multiple landscapes. Architecture is used to highlight the landscape’s association with the cosmos, with mythological events, and with historical and current events and is also the frame for where people live and work (Mack, 2004).
Evidence for humans symbolically embuing the natural landscape with additional meaning through the built environment dates to the Neolithic in South India. Ashmounds, large stratified deposits constructed between 3000 and 1200 BC, were loci of social relationships placed with regard to the surrounding landscape (Johansen, 2004).
The connection between the earthly landscape and the celestial landscape has been apparent in India for thousands of years. There is...
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Mack, A. (2016). Architecture and Landscape in India. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7747-7_9741
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